Bio: Julie Payette Is Living Her Dream

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Bio: Julie Payette is living her dream

Global News Published: Tuesday, June 16, 2009

At the age of nine, Julie Payette decided she would become an astronaut. She watched the Apollo astronauts bounce along the surface of the moon and became captivated with space.

She was born in Montreal in 1963, and grew up in Ahuntsic, a suburb of that city. Her father was an engineer and her mother was an accountant for a theatre. Canadian Space Agency astronaut Julie Payette. The young Payette had a photo of astronaut

(Scott Audette/Reuters) Neil Armstrong stuck to her bedroom door, Related Links: read every science magazine she could get Email to a friend her hands on and watched hours of television programs about space. Printer friendly While she knew it was unrealistic, she Font: dreamed of blasting off and driving a rover * * * * along the surface of the moon.

She was selected for a scholarship from United World College of the Atlantic in Wales. Payette wrote in her United yearbook entry that, “One day I'll make an enormous pop right into orbit around the earth and contemplate the world.”

She received engineering degrees from McGill University and the University of Toronto before doing research on computer systems, language processing and automatic speech recognition.

Payette worked as an engineer at IBM Canada and a researcher at U of T. She was working as a research engineer at Bell-Northern Research when she applied to be an astronaut with the Canadian Space Agency.

Payette was selected out of 5,330 applicants to join the CSA in 1992, becoming Canada’s second female astronaut, behind Roberta Bondar.

While preparing for her first space mission, she worked 15-hour days at the Johnson Space Center in Houston to obtain her commercial pilot’s license, study Russian and log 120 hours on board a reduced-gravity aircraft as a research operator.

Payette made history in May 1999, becoming the first Canadian woman to visit the International Space Station. She brought along Canadian paraphernalia: CDs by Canadian artists, a Montreal Canadiens hockey team crest, a bottle of maple syrup and a clown nose she received from Cirque du Soleil.

She speaks English, French, Russian, Spanish and Italian, and is also an accomplished musician. Payette is a trained pianist and has sung with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, the Piacere Vocale in Basel, Switzerland, and the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra in Toronto.

The 45-year-old astronaut balances her work demands with a busy personal life. She is married to Lockheed Martin test pilot Billie Flynn and has two children, aged five and 15. She is also a talented athlete, and enjoys running, skiing, racquet sports and scuba diving.

Payette is set to make history again when she reaches the ISS and meets fellow Canadian astronaut Robert Thirsk. It will be the first time Canada has had two astronauts in space at the same time.

As flight engineer, she will operate three robotic arms – the shuttle’s Canadarm, the station’s Canadarm2 and an arm on the Japanese laboratory, Kibo, located outside the station. She will also help navigate Endeavour during flight and as it docks with the space station.

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